Ice storms are able to put the life of an entire state on hold, as power distribution is disrupted and often not restored for a couple of weeks. You are left with nothing much to do, other than to admire the cold beauty of ice “kingdom” around you. You turn into a truly “captive audience”.

A week without any power

We all remember the 1998 ice storm in Quebec. Here are some pictures of this devastating event. Over fifty high voltage towers collapsed, one after another. According to wiki “just one quarter of an inch of ice accumulation can add about 500 pounds of weight per line span”.

(photo by Michel Laflamme)

(photo by Jacques Paul)

(photo by Serge LeClair)

(photo by Michel Lacroix)

Close to 1.4 million people in Quebec and 230,000 in Ontario were without electricity. In some cases, people stayed without power for up to six weeks. It was the most destructive storm in Canadian history. This is a good article about it. Also, for some interesting photographs of a significant ice storm in Spokane, Washington in 1996.

Ice-encased sea of grass

Mike Hollingshead from Extreme Instability documented the ice storm that happened in December 2006 in Nebraska and parts of Kansas. With photographer’s permission we reproduce some of the most impressive pictures of the aftermath of that storm.

The following pictures were taken in Hungary, at Lake Balaton by an unknown photographer:

The conditions responsible for creating these icicles seem to be similar to the more famous extreme weather occasion on Lake Leman. In fact, these conditions happen throughout the region – the following picture was taken at a lake in central Italy, called Bolsena, in a windy area 100km north of Rome:

Technically, not an ice storm, but a very impressive accumulation of ice due to the high wind (gusting to 110 km/h) on Lake Leman near Geneva, Switzerland. This has happened 2 years ago and the pictures were widely seen on the internet, but they never fail to fascinate. See more photos here.

The ice encasing these unfortunate automobiles will melt, but the situation could’ve been much worse – like during the flood of Badger River in Newfoundland in 2003. All the flood water froze completely and the trapped cars were sitting in two-meters-deep ice for months: